| Unit name | Social and Legal Theory |
|---|---|
| Unit code | LAWDM0083 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Katie Cruz |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Units you must take before you take this one (pre-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you must take alongside this one (co-requisite units) |
LAWDM0084 |
| Units you may not take alongside this one |
None |
| School/department | University of Bristol Law School |
| Faculty | Faculty of Social Sciences and Law |
Why is this unit important?
Social and Legal Theory is a mandatory unit in the MSc in Socio-Legal Studies. It offers a transformative academic journey that delves deep into the interconnections between law and society. This unit will introduce you to the rich tapestry of theories and analyses that explore how law reflects, and in turn shapes, broader societal dynamics. By engaging with a wide range of authors and intellectual movements, such as Marx, Weber, Habermas, Foucault, and Feminist Legal Studies, you will learn how to critically question the deeper workings of legal systems understood in their fuller social, political, and historical context. Through the lenses of Social and Legal Theory, law will be ultimately seen not just as a discrete and perhaps neutral field but as an organic articulation of the power, knowledge, and ideology regimes imbued in a given society: a substantive achievement for any scholar engaged in socio-legal studies.
How does this unit fit into your programme of study?
The Social and Legal Theory Unit should be seen almost as the substantive counterpart to the more methodological Units within the MSc in Socio-Legal Studies. Through this Unit, you will achieve two fundamental goals within the MSc programme: familiarise yourself with authors and schools of thought that will prove fundamental in informing your own approach to socio-legal studies more generally, and engage directly with concepts, ideas, and areas of study which will help you define the topic of your MSc Dissertation.
An overview of content
The aim of this unit is to explore the relationship between law and society by engaging with a wide range of foundational authors and schools of thought that have shaped both social and legal theory. The objective is to study law as an integral part of social dynamics, a system that is not necessarily neutral and detached but is, in fact, the complex and sometimes contradictory expression of power, knowledge, and ideology regimes in a given society. As such, law emerges as a structuring and structured force which cannot be understood if not holistically, within its fuller social, political, and historical context. Such awareness, coupled with specific knowledge of several intellectual approaches to the problematic relationship between the legal field and society, will provide you with an original and deeper understanding of the critical junctures of current legal systems, making them able to investigate both the limits and opportunities of law. To this end, the Unit will focus, in each workshop, on a particular author or school of thought, ranging from Marx to Habermas, to Foucault and Feminist Legal Studies, so as to give you the opportunity to engage both with primary and secondary sources, and to allow you to develop your own understanding of and approach to the field. The authors/schools of thought will broadly be presented in chronological order but throughout the unit there will be a strong emphasis on the interconnections between the various topics, showing both convergences and conflicts among different scholars.
How will students, personally, be different as a result of the unit?
This unit will enable you to perceive law's influence extending far beyond statutory texts, prompting you to scrutinize it as a multifaceted, socially embedded practice. By examining law as an essential component of societal dynamics, students will gain an understanding of its profound underpinnings and will be encouraged to question its functioning, fostering a broader intellectual horizon and honing interdisciplinary analytical skills. Integrating this perspective shift with in-depth knowledge of social and legal theory, and employing an interdisciplinary critical approach students will have the groundings to become catalysts for change within their legal spheres.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the unit, a successful student will be able to:
The unit will typically be delivered through eight two-hour workshops. Workshops will be highly interactive and will require previous engagement with the assigned materials. Students will be challenged to critically evaluate the assigned materials and encouraged to apply the newly acquired concepts and ideas to key areas of law in order to test and develop their own research interests.
Tasks which help you learn and prepare you for summative tasks (formative):
Formative assessments will come in many forms such as informal questioning, quizzes and group exercises in seminars and via asynchronous activities in the virtual learning platform. These will contribute to your learning and will not count towards your final unit mark.
The formative assessment will consist of a 1,500 words coursework submission with a question that will ask students to describe and critically assess one of the concepts/approaches/authors/schools of thought studies in the first half of the unit. The formative will help the students familiarise with knowledge and skills later required for the summative. Students will receive individual written feedback on this work.
Tasks which count towards your unit mark (summative):
The summative assessment will consist of a coursework submission (4,000 words) that will assess all the intended learning outcomes of the unit. The students will be able to choose one essay question from a range of options that will cover the whole spectrum of the topics covered in the unit.
When assessment does not go to plan:
When a student fails the unit and is eligible to resubmit, the unit will be reassessed on a like-for-like basis using new assessment questions.
If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.
If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. LAWDM0083).
How much time the unit requires
Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours
of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks,
independent learning and assessment activity.
See the University Workload statement relating to this unit for more information.
Assessment
The assessment methods listed in this unit specification are designed to enable students to demonstrate the named learning outcomes (LOs). Where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, schools will make reasonable adjustments to support a student to demonstrate the LO by an alternative method or with additional resources.
The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit.
The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. For appropriate assessments, if you have self-certificated your absence, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (for assessments at the end of TB1 and TB2 this is usually in the next re-assessment period).
The Board of Examiners will take into account any exceptional circumstances and operates
within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.
